Changing the Face of STEM in the U.S. Virgin Islands through Targeted Interventions to Expand Opportunities and Broaden Participation

The goal of this Pilot is to create a transferable model that uses innovative partnerships between universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, a professional society, and businesses, to create a Local Backbone Organization with a shared vision for change and common success metrics to achieve collective impact in broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). The University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) is the project lead and has a strong culture for the support and development of STEM students. The strategic plan contains mutually-reinforcing activities, including targeted interventions and cross-cutting support programming, to build scientific identity and thereby increase interest and engagement in STEM by U.S. Virgin Islanders. The proposed model is scalable and transferable to other communities, particularly Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who seek to broaden participation in STEM in the field sciences. If funded, this Pilot will launch an NSF Alliance in Year 2 and become a model for broadening participation in STEM across the nation.

Changing the Face of STEM in the U.S. Virgin Islands through Targeted Interventions to Expand Opportunities and Broaden Participation

The goal of this Pilot is to create a transferable model that uses innovative partnerships between universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, a professional society, and businesses, to create a Local Backbone Organization with a shared vision for change and common success metrics to achieve collective impact in broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). The University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) is the project lead and has a strong culture for the support and development of STEM students. The strategic plan contains mutually-reinforcing activities, including targeted interventions and cross-cutting support programming, to build scientific identity and thereby increase interest and engagement in STEM by U.S. Virgin Islanders. The proposed model is scalable and transferable to other communities, particularly Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who seek to broaden participation in STEM in the field sciences. If funded, this Pilot will launch an NSF Alliance in Year 2 and become a model for broadening participation in STEM across the nation.

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What a wonderful video and more important, what a wonderful set of ideas to include young people in the USVI in the protection and stewardship of their special marine environment. This program has a great idea for a STEM science pipeline. I was excited to see the focus on students who live in USVI.

Thank you!

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Found helpful:Sarah Haavind

Kristin Grimes

Presenter

May 15, 2017 | 08:44 a.m.

Thank you, Sharon! We are really excited about our program! For more information, check out our website, seasyourtomorrow.org

Kristin: Just love how you start with known dropping out points for local underserved youth. Adding to that, partnerships with Penn State as well as the Nature Conservancy to promote local conservation and local field science learning, also terrific. And loved hearing from your middle schooler who started out not even knowing how to swim (as an islander!), shifting to dreaming of a STEM career in marine science. Congratulations on this great project and your goals for broadening participation using similarly smart models that start locally and think far more widely.

Changing the Face of STEM visitors: Kristin is present and happy to answer your questions. What do you notice? What do you wonder as you imagine extending this model to your local setting?

This is a very exciting workforce development effort that pairs with excellent partners. Do you ever have the occasion to bring together all the participants from middle school to PHD bridge program. Cross generational interaction might intensify the "root" the early career aspirations of the middle schoolers. Caring for the environment and obtaining good jobs is definitely a win-win. Do you have any data about the impact and "staying power" of the program participants over time? Look forward to learning more.

We are very excited about the progress and potential of our project. To address your second question first, we have some preliminary data about prior participants in the Youth Ocean Explorers (YOE) program enrolling in the university. However, we don't know if the YOE program influenced them to enroll or if they were already planning on enrolling. That's part of the information we are hoping to gain through this project. We ulitmately want to track students from first contact with us through time as long as possible and investigate their science identity and its changes along the way. In an effort to provide support/mentoring to the YOE participants we will have the Bridge Program participants, after having completed their summer, share their experiences with the YOE students. We also have prior YOE participants acting as mentors during this year's YOE program. I am really looking forward to seeing how supporting efforts like mentoring and invovling families, impacts student identity.

Kristin Grimes

Presenter

May 16, 2017 | 11:34 a.m.

Thanks Carrie Jo! Vivian, we are also building other opportunities for students to interact across the SEAS Program. Not only will Bridge students share their experiences with YOEs, but we've also asked these students to share their experiences with our undergraduates - the interns, SCI 100 students, and/or our junior and senior students through their academic year seminars. We are also trying to think of ways to have our undergraduate interns interact with the YOEs; this has been a little more complicated because 3 out of 4 interns are based on St. Croix this year and the YOE program is based on St. Thomas. We are currently exploring virtual ways for them to interact. We believe the power of near peers to mentor each other and share their stories and experiences, is critically important in helping to build science identity.

Wow! This project is epic. I love that it's both locally relevant and spans across middle to graduate school. It might be too early to know, but I am curious if there's any data on kids who have participated in the program and how they move through the program? I would also like to hear more ideas from our visitors of how these kids could potentially interact across ages, time, and space. What sort of mentorship model would you recommend in this program? Lastly, I see a main goal of the program is to develop a transferable model, so I'm wondering how this model would in fact transfer to other contexts. Any ideas of how you might see a similar model in your area?

Kristin Grimes

Presenter

May 17, 2017 | 08:46 a.m.

Hi Breanne! The project started in December 2016, so we haven't had the chance yet to follow students. However, the Youth Ocean Explorer program has been running for longer. A former Youth Ocean Explorer is now at UVI majoring in marine biology and has accepted one of our undergraduate internships that will partner her with NOAA through the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program. Over the long-term, we would like to track our students to see if participation in SEAS encourages them to stay in STEM.

Nancy Shapiro

Facilitator

May 17, 2017 | 08:39 a.m.

Beautiful video--and a compelling vision. How many students are involved at each of the three levels? How sustainable is the project after the NSF funding goes away? Will the regional partners continue to support student interns? You suggest that the project is scalable to other HBCUs--how do you see that happening? What is the approximate "cost per participant?" at each level?

I can help address your questions about participant numbers. Currently we aim to have 3-5 Bridge Program students each summer, 6-10 total (we have 3 this year), 3-5 Undergrad Interns each summer, 6-10 total (we have 4 this year), approximately 20 Youth Ocean Explorers participants each summer, ~40 total (beginning July, 2017), and approximately 200 Science 100 course students (1st & 2nd year college) for three semesters.